Things on a Table

In Things On a Table, the associations of everyday objects start to coalesce questions about art history and the bourgeois obsession with object possession and arrangement, of gender and representation as well as environmental and ethical issues. A whirl of landscapes, upheavals and transformations form simultaneously in front of the audience and the unblinking camera. Perspectives switch between the micro and macro so that the objects on a table start to take on dimensions and meaning far beyond their humble, recognisable forms.

Things On a Table starts with a table in the dark. On this table - a metaphorical tabula rasa - ordinary everyday objects, paper, milk, ink, an apple, a glass of water, are manipulated into a series of assemblages, cajoled into compositional exactitude, lit and framed by a camera connected to a projector.

During the performance, musician and artist Katrin Hahner will perform Gertrude Stein’s text from the play Objects Lie On a Table by spoken word. Stein’s text evokes methods of her cubist circle, breaking language and viewpoint apart to form new compositions, bridging the space between the visual, the musical and the verbal.

Choreographies emerge from the assembly of objects witnessed by the camera but also from the movements of the people creating these assemblies, arranging object, light, camera - as alchemists extracting the magical from everyday material.

We also warmly invite you to the book launch of 'A Play', the pocket book by Uta Eisenreich and James Langdon, published by Roma publications and launched by San Seriffe on the 16th of April prior to the performance from 7 PM onwards.